Mein Kempf

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cronus
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Mein Kempf

Post by cronus » Sun Nov 24, 2013 5:27 pm

Anyone read it? own a copy? read it more than once or half way? Pick and dip?
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Jason » Sun Nov 24, 2013 5:31 pm

I've got it on audiobook, but I've never listened to it or read it. I've listened to parts and found it kind of dull and plodding. :dunno:

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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by cronus » Sun Nov 24, 2013 5:54 pm

Făkünamę wrote:I've got it on audiobook, but I've never listened to it or read it. I've listened to parts and found it kind of dull and plodding. :dunno:
Knew his audience...
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:05 am

Tried to read it once. Didn't get beyond halfway. Boring and repetetive.
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Jason » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:09 am

Disappointing right? I expected better from such a renouned orator. :|~

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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Svartalf » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:12 am

He probably could have made a public reading interesting, but writing was not his medium.
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by klr » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:15 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:Tried to read it once. Didn't get beyond halfway. Boring and repetetive.
You got halfway? I think you may be harbouring facist tendencies to stick it out that long. :mob:

A friend of mine owns a copy, but that's strictly for research purposes. But since his ancestors came from Croatia, maybe he has facist tendencies as well :what:
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Shaker » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:02 am

A book of quite immense historical importance, value and significance.

As a book, at least in the translation I own as a not-very-good German speaker, one of the most horrendously and horrifically badly-written written books I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. This is a book which gives the word 'turgid' an unfortunate reputation.

As far as I can tell Hitler was an utterly and absolutely magical, hypnotic, captivating public speaker the like of which the world has rarely seen, who in person could have thousands in the palm of his hand.

As far as a writer goes, a mentally handicapped dung beetle could do better.
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Hermit » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:39 am

Hi, Shaker. :hiwave: Long time no see. Welcome back.

I have read bits of Mein Kampf in English and in German. There is definitely something lost in translation, but even the German version is no more than a seemingly interminable, rambling rant. It could be shortened to a fraction of its size without any loss of content. In fact, Hitler himself did that in a speech some time in the early 1940s.

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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Hermit » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:43 am

Oh, and Scumple, you misspelled "Kampf". :gram:
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Re: Mein Kampf

Post by Calilasseia » Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:28 am

Read it both in English, and, many years ago, in the original German. On both occasions it was a funereally boring read. In addition to being a crash course in everything that should be avoided in the world of German grammar. The most heinously abused construct being the terminating verb clause.

Certain German words, such as weil, wenn and bis ("because", "if/when" and "until", respectively, the second of these two depending upon context, and usually differentiated by a move to subjunctive instead of indicative verbs), mark the beginning of the infamous terminating verb clause, so called because the verbs in such a clause are all shunted to the end of the clause. This includes participles and auxiliary verbs, so that the end of the clause can, in the worst case scenario, consist of a veritable linguistic car crash of verb-associated words. Even a single terminating verb clause can end up with as many as four of these, depending upon the particular combination of mood and tense used.

What really makes the terminating verb clause ripe for abuse, though, is that such clauses can be nested. This is where the real horror lies. Needless to say, literary figures avoid this sort of offence against both linguistic and aesthetic sensibilities with a passion, because it's all too easy for attempts at sophisticated thinking, if not controlled rigorously, to generate nested terminating verb clauses spanning entire pages of a book. Indeed, one of the standing jokes in certain parts of German academia, centres upon a caricature lecturer, who launches into his lecture, opens one terminating verb clause after another, nesting them twelve deep, and ending the lecture after 45 minutes of this with a huge stream of verbs, resulting in the students spending the next week desperately comparing notes, to try and determine just what the lecturer was supposed to be saying. Since humans aren't naturally stack oriented machines, you can imagine the hilarity that can ensue in such a scenario, and the manner in which this device can be deployed by the duplicitous, to befuddle an audience or conceal real intent, hiding said intent in plain sight whilst relying upon the limited stack processing capacity of most listeners.

Whether Hitler simply possessed both a lousy command of German grammar, and foggy thinking (the latter most certainly aided in expression by the former in the case of the terminating verb clause), or whether he was a singular genius, hiding some of his most obscenely controversial ideas in plain sight by deployment of this device, is a question that will doubtless keep translators and academics busy long into the night. However, in the original German, one of the reasons that Mein Kampf is regarded as a poisoned chalice by translators, is that Hitler abused the terminating verb clause (among other constructs) with an almost inhuman vengeance. Some of the most egregious examples spread across three pages, before coming to an end in a train crash of verbs. Successful negotiation of this literary minefield, for the purpose of translating it into other languages, is regarded as possibly the most severe test any translator of German literature will have to face, even surpassing the funereally boring exercise in pedantry as a masturbation activity that is Das Kapital.

The one redeeming feature I can find in this work, is that despite the author's pathological obsession with Jews and the extirpation thereof, and his frankly creepy preoccupation with inter-racial sex, it still manages to be less psychotic than the Koran.

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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:38 am

:lol:
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by JimC » Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:44 am

Shaker wrote:A book of quite immense historical importance, value and significance.

As a book, at least in the translation I own as a not-very-good German speaker, one of the most horrendously and horrifically badly-written written books I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. This is a book which gives the word 'turgid' an unfortunate reputation.

As far as I can tell Hitler was an utterly and absolutely magical, hypnotic, captivating public speaker the like of which the world has rarely seen, who in person could have thousands in the palm of his hand.

As far as a writer goes, a mentally handicapped dung beetle could do better.
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by Seth » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:33 am

Shaker wrote:A book of quite immense historical importance, value and significance.

As a book, at least in the translation I own as a not-very-good German speaker, one of the most horrendously and horrifically badly-written written books I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. This is a book which gives the word 'turgid' an unfortunate reputation.

As far as I can tell Hitler was an utterly and absolutely magical, hypnotic, captivating public speaker the like of which the world has rarely seen, who in person could have thousands in the palm of his hand.

As far as a writer goes, a mentally handicapped dung beetle could do better.
Yeah, but he still comes in second to Karl Marx and Josef Engels.
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Re: Mein Kempf

Post by cronus » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:36 am

Hermit wrote:Oh, and Scumple, you misspelled "Kampf". :gram:
Wasn't on purpose....a book I rarely think about in a language I don't comprehend. Got most of it right. :prof:
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